4 15 lights, camera, action

lights,
camera, action!
Fascinating Facts
• A Frenchman named Louis Lumière (lwee
lyoom-YEHR) invented the movie camera in
1895. One of his first movies showed a train
arriving in Lyons, France.

• “The Golden Age of Radio” lasted from the
1920s to the 1950s. Radio programs during
this time were diverse, entertaining, and very
popular.

• The first televisions had black-and-white
pictures. In 1954 color came to television.

Genre

Nonfiction

Comprehension Skill

Draw Conclusions

Text Features

• Captions
• Table of Contents

Scott Foresman Social Studies

ISBN 0-328-14868-7

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by Kristin Cashore


People love entertainment. During the 1900s
the entertainment industry in the United States
grew and changed. In this book you will learn
about the history of vaudeville, the movies,
radio, Broadway musicals, and television.

Vocabulary
industry

profitable

vaudeville

hub

production

diverse

lights,
What iscamera,
your favorite kindaction!
of entertainment? Is

it one of the kinds you read about in this book,
Write to It!

or something different? Write a paragraph about
your favorite kind of entertainment. Explain
why you like it.
Write your paragraph on a separate sheet
of paper.

Table of Contents
People Look for Fun.....……………...……………page 2
Vaudeville and Musical Productions…………...page 4
The Movie Industry Takes Off………………..…..page 6
Home Entertainment: The Rise of Radio………page 8
The Broadway Musical…...……………………...page 10
Photographs

The Movie Industry Soars………………………..page 12
Enter the Television…….………………………...page 14

by Kristin Cashore

Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material. The publisher deeply
regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions.
Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, a division of Pearson Education.
Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R) Background (Bkgd)

Entertaining Choices…….………………………..page 15
ISBN: 0-328-14868-7
Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected
by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited
reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding
permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue,
Glenview, Illinois 60025.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0G1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

Opener: ©GDT/Getty Images
2 ©Corbis
3 ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images
4 ©Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
5 ©Bettmann/Corbis
6 ©Zuma Movie Stills Library/Zuma Press
7 ©Underwood & Underwood/Corbis
8 ©Getty Images
9 ©Bettmann/ Corbis
Editorial Offices: Glenview, Illinois • Parsippany, New Jersey • New York, New York
10 ©The Granger Collection, NY
11 ©John Springer Collection/Corbis
Sales Offices: Needham, Massachusetts • Duluth, Georgia • Glenview, Illinois
13 ©Hulton/Getty ImagesCoppell, Texas • Sacramento, California • Mesa, Arizona
14 ©Bettmann/Corbis
15 ©GDT/Getty Images


People Look for Fun
In the early 1900s the United States was changing.
Urban areas, for example, were growing. People were
moving from the countryside to the cities in search of

jobs and excitement. Immigrants from all over Europe
and Asia were also coming to live in the growing cities.
Inventions were also changing the way that people
in the United States lived. At one time, most families
had woven their own cloth and grown their own food.
Now, they were more likely to buy cheap fabric made
in factories and food grown by farmers who used
machines to grow many crops quickly.
Because of these changes not only did more people
live in towns and cities, but more people also had
the luxury of free time. What did these people want
to do with their free time? Many of them wanted
entertainment!

In the early 1900s cities in the
United States were growing.

In 1909 twenty million people visited Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York.

In the early 1900s a family in Brooklyn might spend
a day at the amusement parks on Coney Island. A father
and his children in Chicago might go to the ballpark to
watch the local baseball team play. Large circuses were
traveling all over the country by train. If the circus was
in town, a family might go out to see the show.
These kinds of entertainment were only the beginning.
The first half of the 1900s saw the birth of the American
musical, movies, radio, and television. The entertainment
industry grew and expanded in the United States.
What was entertainment like in the early 1900s? How

did entertainment grow and change in the United States?
One of the first steps in the growth of entertainment
was called vaudeville (VAWD-vill).

3


Vaudeville and
Musical Productions
A vaudeville show was a type of entertainment
that included many short acts. The acts usually did
not relate to one another. For example, a dancing act
might come before or after an act with animal tricks,
and a magic act might come next. It did not matter if
the acts matched. It only mattered that the acts were
entertaining. During the late 1800s and early 1900s,
vaudeville shows played in large cities. They also
toured through small towns.
The vaudeville performers were dancers, singers,
comics, and people with unusual skills or talents.
The most talented vaudeville performers were likely
to become stars in the big cities. The most stunning
vaudeville shows took place at New York City’s
Palace Theater.

A vaudeville show might
include an act, such as this
one, where a strong man
could balance two people
with his mouth.

4

In the 1910s New Yorkers flocked to Broadway to see
not only vaudeville shows, but also dazzling musical
productions. A production is something created with
the work of many people and involving many different
parts. These musical shows had big bands, fancy
costumes, and talented singers and dancers. They did not
have complex plots, but they were very flashy and
entertaining. A man named Florenz Ziegfeld (FLORehnz ZEEG-feld) started one of these shows. It was
called the Ziegfeld Follies and it played on Broadway
for many years.
During the 1910s
another entertainment
wave began to sweep
across the country:
the movies.

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson
was a famous tap dancer
in Broadway musicals.

5


The Movie Industry Takes Off
During the 1910s and most of the 1920s, inventors
did not know how to connect moving pictures with
sound. Therefore, the first movies were silent. There

was no dialogue and no sound effects. If the characters
talked, their words would be written on the screen for
the audience to read. Many movie theaters played live
music as a background to these silent films. Stars such
as Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford became famous
for their silent movie work.
During this time, large movie studios began to take
over the business of movie production. Studios such
as Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner
Brothers, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, hired writers,
directors, composers,
editors, and actors. The
studios paid for movies
to be made and then
made their money back
when people bought
movie tickets. The studios
became quite wealthy.
Making movies was a
profitable business.

Even today, many people
watch and enjoy Charlie
Chaplin’s silent films.

6

In 1934 the romantic comedy It Happened One Night,
starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, won five Oscars
at the Academy Awards.

Because southern California had good weather
and lots of sunlight, Hollywood became the hub of
moviemaking. In the late 1920s inventors learned how
to put sound and pictures together. This ended the silent
movie era, and the movie industry in Hollywood really
took off.
The early movies with sound were called “talkies.” The
studios made talkie after talkie, and audiences loved
them. The big stars of the 1930s included Bette Davis,
Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn,
Spencer Tracy, and Vivien Leigh. As the movies took
over the entertainment industry, the great era of
vaudeville came to an end. In 1932 even the Palace
Theater in New York City gave up its vaudeville shows
and began to show movies instead.

7


Home Entertainment:
The Rise of Radio
In the 1920s radio found a place in the entertainment
industry. The first radio shows were similar to vaudeville
shows and were short acts with music or comedy.
By the middle of the 1930s, however, radio had
changed. Influenced by the movies, radio became a place
for listening to stories. There were science fiction radio
shows, Westerns, mysteries, adventures, and comedies.
There were even radio versions of Hollywood movies.

Sometimes the original movie stars even played the
same roles on the radio.
By 1939 about 80 percent of families in the United
States owned radios. Newscasters reported live news
on the radio. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the
radio to talk to people about what was happening in
the country and around the world. He called his radio
talks “fireside chats.” Radio connected people in their
homes with the rest of the world.

Early radios were much
bigger than the radios
of today.

During the 1930s and World War II, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt used radio to reach out to people across the nation.

Radio entertainment became more and more
creative and diverse. Popular comedians Jack Benny,
George Burns, and Gracie Allen delighted listeners.
During the day many people listened to soap operas.
Thrilled audiences sat by their radios as heroes,
such as the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, and the Green
Hornet, stopped crime.
In 1938 Orson Welles broadcasted a story over the
radio in New York City. The story, by H. G. Wells, was
called The War of the Worlds. It was about a Martian
invasion of Earth. Some listeners did not realize that The
War of the Worlds was a story. They thought it was a real
newscast. Millions of listeners, thinking that Martians

were invading Earth, took to the streets in panic!
Orson Welles went on to become a very influential
movie director—but in 1938, he proved the influence
of radio!
9


The Broadway Musical
At the same time that the radio industry began to
grow, Broadway was changing. Musical productions,
such as the Ziegfeld Follies, were very exciting but did
not tell much of a story. In 1927 Jerome Kern and
Oscar Hammerstein produced a show called Showboat,
which changed this.
Showboat was less of a singing and dancing show
and more of a musical play. It had a storyline. There
was some depth to its characters. The musical numbers
were very important to the show, but now they were
connected by a plot.
Showboat marked the beginning of a change on
Broadway. In the following years Broadway musicals
with interesting plots and characters continued to be
made. By the 1940s Broadway shows had rich themes,
complex plots, complicated characters, and of course,
great music. Some of the
big hits of the 1940s, such
as Oklahoma!, Carousel,
and South Pacific, are
still performed today.

In 1927 Showboat changed the
standard for Broadway musicals.

10

In the 1930s and 1940s,
Fred Astaire and Ginger
Rogers danced their way
into the movies.

The movie industry was never one to let a good
thing pass. As Broadway shows became more popular,
Hollywood moviemakers realized that many musicals
would make good movies. Stars Judy Garland and
Gene Kelly sang in Hollywood musicals. Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers became famous for their onscreen
dancing. Broadway composers and writers, such as
Rodgers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin,
and Cole Porter, became even more famous thanks to
the movies.
Of course, musicals were not the only films being
made. In the 1940s and 1950s, the movie industry was
at its peak. All kinds of movies were being made in
southern California.

11


The Movie Industry Soars
In the 1940s World War II raged. It was a stressful

time and the movies were a comfort and an escape for
many people in the United States. Even the government
encouraged the movie industry to keep up its good
work. The government hoped that the movies would
make people feel better about life during the war.
Some movies from that time, such as Casablanca and
Notorious, had war themes.
Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant,
Bette Davis, Jimmy Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor were
just a few of the big stars during this time. Walt Disney
began to make his animated movies, starting with
Fantasia in 1940, Dumbo in 1941, and Bambi in 1942.
In 1941 Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred
in the movie Citizen Kane. Just as Showboat changed
Broadway in 1927, Citizen Kane changed movies.
The photography in Welles’s film was inventive and
original. He used sound in new ways and introduced
flashbacks to enhance the movie experience for
the audience. Even the makeup in Citizen Kane,
which allowed the characters to age over time, was
revolutionary.
Citizen Kane was not well liked when it was first
made. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time, but it
had a huge influence on movies to come.
Citizen Kane was a groundbreaking film.
Many filmmakers copied Orson Welles’s
ideas in their own films.

12

13


Entertaining Choices

Audiences never knew what silly adventures Lucille
Ball (left) would have next on I Love Lucy.

Enter the Television
In the 1950s the movies finally faced a challenge in
the form of an exciting new invention called television.
Many people were happy to stay at home and watch
television rather than go out to movies.
Comedy shows became very popular. Viewers giggled
as actress Lucille Ball got herself involved in humorous
situations on I Love Lucy. Audiences giggled again
as a husband and wife had funny arguments on The
Honeymooners.
Children loved the adventures of a dog named Lassie.
Soap operas were just as popular on television as they
had been on the radio. The news changed too—now
viewers could watch news as it happened.
People in the United States made television the most
popular form of entertainment.

14

Television took business away from movies and radio.
Movies and radio stepped up to the challenge and tried
to become more diverse. Both tried to offer things that

the other industries could not.
Movies, radio, and television have all changed since
the 1940s and 1950s. Some changes have been because
of new inventions. Others have been caused by changes
in society. Some changes have happened because the
industries wanted to try new things.
Movies, radio, and television are all going strong today.
Broadway musicals and plays are also thriving. The
entertainment industry is continuing to grow.
Today, our choices for entertainment are much more
diverse than they were in the early 1900s. Without the
vaudeville shows and the silent movies of the past,
however, we would never have so many choices today.
The early entertainers paved the road for today’s movies,
radio programs, television shows, and musicals.

Today, entertainment is one of
the most successful industries
in the United States.

15


People love entertainment. During the 1900s
the entertainment industry in the United States
grew and changed. In this book you will learn
about the history of vaudeville, the movies,
radio, Broadway musicals, and television.
Glossary
diverse varied

hub a center of activity
Vocabulary
industry a business
that makes profitable
a product or
industry
provides a service
hub
vaudeville
production production
something created with
the work of
diverse
many people and involving many different parts
profitable making a lot of money

Write to It!
What is your favorite kind of entertainment? Is
it one of the kinds you read about in this book,
or something different? Write a paragraph about
your favorite kind of entertainment. Explain
why you like it.
Write your paragraph on a separate sheet
of paper.

vaudeville stage entertainment that involves
Table of Contents
many short, unrelated acts
People Look for Fun.....……………...……………page 2
Vaudeville and Musical Productions…………...page 4

The Movie Industry Takes Off………………..…..page 6
Home Entertainment: The Rise of Radio………page 8
The Broadway Musical…...……………………...page 10
Photographs

The Movie Industry Soars………………………..page 12
Enter the Television…….………………………...page 14

Every effort has been made to secure permission and provide appropriate credit for photographic material. The publisher deeply
regrets any omission and pledges to correct errors called to its attention in subsequent editions.
Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs are the property of Scott Foresman, a division of Pearson Education.
Photo locators denoted as follows: Top (T), Center (C), Bottom (B), Left (L), Right (R) Background (Bkgd)

Entertaining Choices…….………………………..page 15
ISBN: 0-328-14868-7
Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected
by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited
reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding
permission(s), write to: Permissions Department, Scott Foresman, 1900 East Lake Avenue,
Glenview, Illinois 60025.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 V0G1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

16

Opener: ©GDT/Getty Images
2 ©Corbis
3 ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images
4 ©Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

5 ©Bettmann/Corbis
6 ©Zuma Movie Stills Library/Zuma Press
7 ©Underwood & Underwood/Corbis
8 ©Getty Images
9 ©Bettmann/ Corbis
10 ©The Granger Collection, NY
11 ©John Springer Collection/Corbis
13 ©Hulton/Getty Images
14 ©Bettmann/Corbis
15 ©GDT/Getty Images